Cyclicity
by Halfpenny
Summary: Eden is drawn and the dust is settling from the battle with Ultima Weapon, so Zell gets busy remapping the corners of the universe inside his skull. (In-progress.)
1. Chapter 1

**Cyclicity**

* * *

 _Rated for language and canon-typical violence._

 _Zell relearns the universe._

* * *

 _i._

* * *

"For fuck's sake, Dincht, that's an order, don't Draw _—_ "

 _The hell_ _?_ Zell thought, and reached for the last point of light, and the darkness exploded into him in a million smooth, sleek planes.

* * *

.

There was metal and blood and maybe honeysuckle. Squall was bellowing and Irvine's gun kept barking retorts. Ultima Weapon loomed above them amidst wailing equipment and exposed livewires, and as the sparks rained down on them Zell could only think, _I've seen you before._

There was a flutter of wings as big as a ship inside his head. He felt the moon press in on his reality, making the sea underneath him rise until he could no longer see the shore. He opened his mouth to speak, but then sand was rushing down his throat, filling him until it crushed him and he died. When it came back out it flew as a single storm, converging into a continent, and the waxing and waning of the sea against the new shore reminded him how to breathe again.

Overhead, the noise of the sky and the land converged into a single stream. _I am eternity._

 _I'm Zell,_ he thought, which didn't seem strictly true at the moment. He felt like a lot of things, most of them young and kind of dorky. Ma had taught him to be polite, though, and anyway, some things deserved a response. 'I am eternity' was one of them.

The GF's reply in his mind was something he couldn't translate. Instead he felt a shiver of wind, and suddenly all he could see was the leaves of a towering maple tree. The bark of it rippled and expanded and the tree grew until it could no longer support itself, thundering to the ground in the middle of the next wind storm. Grass poked up through the resulting detritus, and then a sapling, and then ten.

 _What can I call you?_ he asked.

Distantly he heard Squall roar another order, but it seemed unimportant. He wondered if they were winning. The world seemed to slow down for him, turning as only an afterthought, rendering consequences meaningless.

The ground shifted, buckling and rising into a rolling hill of echoes: _what what what._

 _Yeah,_ he thought. _What._

The hills sank into the sea, flat and pale under the overcast sky. Zell waited while sand blew over his shoes, revealing the supply of bleached bones just under the surface of the dunes.

When the response from the GF finally came, it wasn't strictly words. It was a million voices lifted in song and the dying groans of an old man and the laughter of a young girl.

They said, _Eden._

Equipment smashed around him. Irvine started to yell.

Zell opened his eyes.

* * *

.

When he was six he'd nearly drowned in the sea outside of the orphanage. Seifer was loud and smart and just as liable to hand out unexpected praise as well as criticism, and for some reason that had made Zell want to impress him rather than stay out of his way.

The water was frigid and the skies had been as silver as gayla wings. Zell had removed everything but his shorts and had splashed out up to his waist, feeling the current battle him. Storms came quickly on the cape, and all of Matron's children had been taught to recognize the signs. A blow was coming, most likely within the hour, but that's what had made the challenge worth it. On a calm day, the seventy-five meter distance to the small island of rock one was nothing to children who lived year-round on the coast.

Later the GFs would claim a lot of the experience, but all in all it was hard to forget drowning. The winds had been wild and the waves had kept pushing him down, and oddly, his main thought was that of course this was the night he was going to miss dinner. It was one of the rare times that they weren't having fish. Seifer would end up eating his share and probably Selphie's too with no one to tattle on him.

Later on, Zell had only the barest recollection of being rescued. Something flashing bright enough to hurt his eyes through his eyelids, someone pounding on his chest hard enough to bruise his ribs. Ellone screaming at Seifer for the first and only time he could remember. Dying was easiest to remember, because dying itself was easy: the way wet sand dribbled out the sides of your fist the tighter you tried to hold onto it.

Zell wasn't sure why he was thinking about it now, with an alien force in his head in his head and Ultima Weapon wreaking destruction around them, but that was the way summoning worked. You were the center of your universe and you were irreplaceable and then suddenly you were nothing at all, even to yourself.

* * *

.

"Told you not to Draw that fucking thing." Squall was a blur of efficient, no-nonsense movement. Gunblade on the floor. Gloves off. He pushed Zell back into a sitting position against the wall.

"Did we win?" His voice sounded wrong. He could see Irvine limping in from the side, supporting himself on a statue of a woman missing both of her arms.

"Depends," Squall said. He sounded terse. Zell's hair was damp with sweat. Squall pushed it aside and tilted Zell's head back, staring hard into his eyes, and Zell wondered what he was looking for.

"He all there?" Irvine stopped a few feet away to lean against a statue missing most of its upper body. His arm was tucked inside his jacket; he was about three shades paler than normal and streaked with blood.

"Can't tell yet."

"I'm here," Zell said. _What happened._ "I'm fine."

Squall said nothing. He reached into the bag next to him and yanked out a bottle, uncorking it with his teeth. Zell turned his head away when the rim met his lips, feeling something in him spark at the motion.

Squall's hand instantly tightened around his jaw so hard Zell thought his teeth would pop out. "Drink it or I shove it down your throat," Squall said.

He drank it. "The hell was that thing," Irvine said. "Never seen anything like it."

"Scan said Ultima Weapon." Squall pulled the half-emptied bottle away before Zell could finish. He set it down and rescued a small pill canister out of his pocket, sliding out two capsules and breaking them with a twist of his fingers. They fizzed when they hit the remaining liquid. Luv Luv Gs.

"Was that really a GF in there?" Irvine still sounded short for breath. Zell wondered how many injuries he'd racked up with that last all-out attack. "Felt like its own goddamn planet."

"Yes, it was, and now it's in his head," Squall said. "Drink," he ordered again, pressing the rim of the bottle to Zell's lips.

Zell felt strange. There was moss under his fingers and his butt was freezing from sitting in the splashes of displaced water. Squall shoved it against his lips again and Zell turned away, and once again wings were unfurling inside him, the galaxy falling open as idly as a child flipping through a storybook.

Squall's hand was back at his throat in an instant. His eyes were bright as metal in the uneven light. For the barest second there was a shudder of Bahamut's wings in his shadow, and recognition opened up behind Zell's own eyes. _Child of gravity,_ eternity whispered. _Child of stars._ "Let him go," Squall said.

 _Child of fate, to challenge the might of my old friend._

Squall's voice was a fraction above a murmur, and some part of Zell recognized him at his most dangerous. "Last warning."

This time the girl's delighted laughter came from outside his head. "Hyne's flaming back hair," he heard Irvine swear.

Squall was a step ahead. He shifted his grip to Zell's chin and slammed his head back against the stone, just hard enough to set off sparks in his skull. Light broke through the shadow; stunned, Zell opened his mouth to speak and was unceremoniously interrupted when Squall upended the contents of the bottle.

He gagged. The stone swam out from underneath him, and for a minute he was drowning in the storm again, Ellone's screams and the silt between his fingers and an old woman's lullaby coming together to form the tapestry of the sea.

Squall's hand was back on his throat.

The sea disappeared with a _click,_ and Zell opened his eyes.

* * *

.

Zell had to spend a solid five minutes convincing Irvine not to loot the boob off a broken statue on the edge of the control deck, which was a full five minutes more than he'd prepared for when first taking his oaths as a SeeD. "But it's just lying on the ground," Irvine said. "Lonely for a man's touch."

"Look, would you shut up about boobs?" Zell said. "We just battled an ancient demon weapon thingy to the death, you think you could be serious for two seconds?"

"Who says I'm not?" There was a bucket of blood and ichor on Irvine's clothes. He looked only slightly more than half-dead. It was hard to know whether Selphie or Quistis would throw the bigger fit, one being interested in his body and the other currently being at the top of the list for laundry duty on the Ragnarok. "Just think of all the adventures it'd see if it came with me. Figured I could hang my necklace off the nipple or use the whole thing as a doorstop. Which do you think fits the dorm décor more?"

"No breasts," Squall said over Zell's indignant sputter, passing them both by with long strides as he returned from the corpse of the Weapon. He took a hold of Irvine's arm in transit, examining it briefly before casting a Cure over it, closing the last of the open wounds into an angry red line. "Check around to see if there's anything else worth the trouble of taking, then meet back here in ten," Squall said. "Watch your step. If you meet up with a fight, yell."

"Sure we should be splitting up yet?" Irvine shrugged his coat on over his ruined clothes before lifting Exeter up with a snap of his wrist, squinting down the barrel. "I mean, who knows how many more beasties are still down here."

"We've had no interruptions since we defeated the Weapon, so the way is probably clear," Squall said, which Zell thought was a pretty bold thing to say considering the number of times their asses had been generously handed to them over the past three hours. "Split up, comb the grounds. I want to get back up there before the girls get it in their heads to come after us."

"Think a soft will work on the nipple?" Irvine muttered to Zell as he made for the adjoining room.

Zell almost hit him. " _Stop saying nipple._ "

Irvine flicked a salute over his shoulder and disappeared around the corner, leaving Zell alone with a boobless statue and about six years of additional therapy.

Zell's connection to Alexander lent him some protection from mortal blows but not from pain, so he parked his aching body an extra minute in the now-empty control room and wondered if it'd be okay to just kind of pretend to search. He didn't care about salvage at this point and there was probably nothing of use down here anyway, considering whatever ancient-ass equipment still functioned was more than likely incompatible with the operating systems at Garden.

Then again, Ragnarok was old as dirt too, and Zell wasn't inured enough to the chain of command to blow off a direct order. He buckled down reluctantly, taking a knee in front of the control center and using his multi-tool to pry off the panel nearest to him. Without knowing what he was after, it took him a while to parse the tangle of wires and shadows in the guts of the machine, but eventually he opted to salvage a grime-encrusted stepper motor and some solenoids in hopes that they'd come in handy later on the ship.

When he straightened up to look for something to wipe them off with, he realized there was a statue regarding him from across the water.

Zell felt himself slow to a stop, thumb slipping to rest inside the coils of the solenoids. The statue was a nude woman with claws in place of feet, long hair parting to frame her bared breasts. Her hips and shoulders were smooth, serpentine curves; her glaring eyes had no pupils.

It was weird, Zell thought, feeling something unpleasant crawl across his skin, that a place dedicated to deep sea research would care about dolling it up with sculptures. The woman looked as old as the surrounding rock formations, but her presence next to the mountains of crusty drill equipment was jarring. If the statues been put there as divine tributes to ward off the monsters, their influence had clearly been overestimated. If they'd been here before it all, it seemed disrespectful to let them break down when the ruins had clearly been a temple of some kind. It was almost as if—

It's almost as if, Zell thought, and there was a dull weight in the back of his head. Absently, he tilted it to redistribute it.

"Gives me the jeebies." Irvine was suddenly beside him, Exeter slung over his shoulder. He was following Zell's gaze with a squint. "Gotta wonder just how old this place is."

"It was abandoned in the last couple decades, but the original tech itself's about a hundred years old." His back was starting to hurt from about a half-dozen too many Different Beats. Judging by the way Squall had been holding his own shoulders, Zell was willing to bet he didn't even want to hear the words 'Blasting Zone' until two or three elixers went down his own neck. "The statues probably predate that."

"Quisty was thinking the ruins came at least a few hundred years before all this." Irvine idly scratched his neck with the side of the barrel. "Thinks they might've built the research lab on top on purpose to get easy access to the materials. Minerals and the like."

"Could be." Zell glanced over at him for the first time. "You weren't gone long. Didn't find anything?"

Irvine tore his own gaze from the statue long enough to give him a blank look. "The ten minutes were up five minutes ago."

The statue's arm was curved around her stomach. The pupil-less eyes seemed to be staring straight at him.

Zell felt the weight shift again, buzzing at the base of his skull.

"C'mon, Dincht." Irvine's hand was a warm weight on his shoulder. "Let's blow this place before all this creepy decides to call friends."

* * *

.

The color of the sea crept back to him around the time they reached the third flight of stairs. He thought he could hear water sloshing under the soles of his sneakers as they passed by the landings, but the cobblestones were dry whenever he glanced down to check. In contrast to the thunderstorm of howls they'd weathered on the way down, their journey back was preternaturally quiet, broken only by Squall's clinking belts and the occasional grunt of effort from Irvine as he lugged their salvaged supplies in a satchel over his shoulder.

The light-headedness from earlier crept steadily back as Zell rounded the corners. The next landing rippled in front of him like an unfurling wave, and he realized that his ears had been ringing for several minutes.

He was about to think something disparaging about gun users and why real men should brawl with their fists like nature intended, but something flickered in the corner of his eye and when his head turned to look, his feet forgot to follow suit. He stumbled and caught himself against a pedestal.

Squall was there in an instant. Irvine cocked Exeter and faced out, setting his stance, bringing up the rear guard while Squall dug around in his pocket.

It was too organized not to be planned. Zell had maybe three seconds to think on it before Squall was breaking Luv Luv G capsules apart again, dumping them into one of their last potions. "Dude, come on," Zell said. "I'm not five."

"How much longer to the surface?" Squall wasn't speaking to him.

Irvine's back was turned. "I'd say about four floors."

"I'm fine," Zell said.

"Drink," Squall said, and pushed the bottle into his hand. "Irvine."

"On it," Irvine said, and slung his gun up over his shoulder with casual, lethal grace to lope up the next stairwell.

Under Squall's direct, hard stare, Zell knocked it back. The ringing in his head eased a bit; when his thoughts realigned he realized Squall had yet to move, still studying him at close range.

Zell's back absorbed the coolness of the pedestal, but his skin felt oddly warm, buzzing like he'd rubbed it own with wool. "I'm about two seconds away from ripping you out of his head with my bare hands," Squall said.

"His heart is vast," Zell said, which was a pretty weird way of saying 'what the hell'. His tongue wasn't working quite right.

"He can't handle this much juice. Whoever you are, you'll need to dial it down if you want him to walk out of here."

The buzzing was back in Zell's head. It was as natural as thought to open his mouth, to run his tongue along the back of his teeth, to breathe in and out and marvel at the primitive mundane miracle of it all.

Squall had no expression at all on his face. "What if not storm brought you here, son of lions?" Zell asked. Reality felt smooth and soft, his tongue moving easily on its own. "When you reached for me, what harbor did you seek?"

Squall repeated, "Dial it down or you'll burn out his motor functions."

"What light attracts you to this shore?"

Squall's skin was warm – too warm, actually, but that wasn't too surprising considering the battle they'd just seen. More important was probably the fact that Zell knew this only because his hand was on the side of his commander's face.

Squall didn't answer for a long time, not bothering to move from under Zell's touch. When he finally spoke up, it was only to say, "Dincht. Fifteen seconds to get topside."

He felt the buzz slide and relocate, like an insect hopping from one blade of grass to the next.

"Ten," Squall said.

Get _off,_ Zell told his hand. Instead he watched as his thumb instead gently skimmed the length of the scar across Squall's nose. Squall's eyes fluttered, just a little, reflexive. "Leave him," Squall said. His voice was strangely quiet, barely audible to Zell's ears. "Come to me."

"No." The words coming from his own mouth were gentle. "There is no room in your heart."

Squall's voice, weirdly enough, was just as gentle. He said, "One."

Zell had enough time to think, _oh, that's what he meant,_ before the hilt of Squall's gunblade met the side of Zell's head and ended the conversation.

* * *

.

On the way up the stairs of the research center, slung over Squall's shoulder, was when Zell finally recalled the other memory he'd lost. That same summer he'd nearly drowned, there'd been a typhoon that'd battered the coast for three days. The waves had been high to cause damage to the orphanage, but back then storms had had a way of slipping past them, like they'd been under a dome.

The bellow of a ship's horn had come on the fourth day, when the sun had returned to the orphanage. The girl on Zell's right had a laugh like a bell and the boy on his left had grown tall enough over the summer to be useful on a farm; the boy with the storm-colored eyes that rarely spoke was probably the smartest of them all. Marketable traits on display, set next to each other on a shelf to appeal to customers.

When the woman had stepped off the ship and had come inside the orphanage, broad and sturdy as an oak barrel, she'd greeted all of them and all of their marketable traits, and in the end had stopped in front of Zell, who'd had none.

She'd asked, _Why are you crying?_

Zell was jostled from the memory when Squall turned hard onto the next landing, skidding a little in the dust. The stones fuzzed in and out of focus below him; everywhere beyond that sat the dazzling blue blaze of water behind glass, and then Zell was back again with the memory of the woman and her sharp, dark eyes.

She'd asked, _Why are you crying?_

He'd answered, _I'm not,_ and Seifer had snickered, and at that moment he'd never hated anyone more in his life. He'd hated her no-nonsense expression and the scent of freshly-baked bread around her despite her having been at sea for several days. In the future, when she became _Ma_ and her house became home and Selphie and Seifer were relegated to the place where his summons slept, he'd have to work hard to unlearn his hatred of that smell.

Zell was brought back again when Squall's steps slowed, and suddenly light burst in from the hatch. Something in Zell unlocked. It was the darkness of caverns for centuries and the giddying rush of fresh air so long after holding his breath. _Sun,_ said a young girl, said a wizened crone, both weeping. _Sun._

Ma Dincht had asked, Why are you crying?

Inside him, eternity found the last unoccupied corner in his head.

 _Because I miss the storm._


	2. Chapter 2

_**ii.**_

* * *

Rinoa called it _acclimation,_ which Zell figured was a tactful way of saying 'got your ass handed to you by a GF you drew against orders'. Quistis was less amused, quickly debriefing Squall before instructing Irvine to drag Zell up to his cot to sleep off the worst of the stupor. "And don't feel obligated to be gentle," she added darkly, punching in the codes for their new destination as Selphie readied the controls. "Hardship builds character."

"Ten four," Irvine said, and proceeded to haul Zell across the ship on his bony shoulder to literally toss him onto his bed. "How 'bout I get you a drink to wash down the crow?" he added cheerfully as Zell cursed and scrabbled to hold onto his mattress.

"How 'bout you get bent and film it?" Zell snapped. "Since when do you follow orders? You could've just said you did it."

"Sorry, but the laundress is king, and my whities don't need to get more tighty. Hit me up for brown-nosing next week when it's your turn."

"You realize I could punch you halfway to Esthar, right? I mean literally?"

"Yeah, but with Quisty doing laundry, I'll be slicker than a spit-shined dress shoe." Irvine was already out the door, hand held over his head. "No matter where I land, figure I'll just keep right on rolling 'til I hit water."

Rinoa's fingertips had a long conversation with Zell's temples that afternoon, after which the headache vanished and the universe quieted into a sleepy, starless spiral inside him. Zell slept on and off for a long time, the Ragnarok's engines a comforting hum underneath the bunk. There was infrequent activity outside his door and what he suspected was the occasional visitor, but for the most part it was him and the ship and its millions of shifting, buzzing, breathing parts.

When the dizziness had evened out somewhat and the stars were appearing outside Ragnarok's windows, Zell stirred himself awake enough to turn his focus inward. Alexander and Quetzalcoatl made up the sum of his inner-constellations, but when he tried to search past the light they cast, the drop-off in the darkness was immediate and terrifying, the contours of the new universe in his head spiraling out of reach.

 _Okay,_ he thought, maybe kind of worried about that. GFs weren't an exact science and this one was less pliable than most, but it should have at least been present enough to poke at. He'd about had a nervous breakdown when he'd plugged in Alexander, but that was because of Alexander's immense size, not because they were incompatible. The sensation Eden created wasn't quantifiable. It was… space. Or at least the facsimile of space, in a place where his brain was supposed to be.

Fine. He dialed it back a little and tried calling out to it instead, distantly hearing the Ragnarok's engines hum as the ship changed trajectory. Nothing. He was tired enough to maybe blow off the exercise in favor of another nap. It's not like there was a hurry. Squall was almost certainly still pissed about having to hoist him around like luggage for a good half hour, so Zell suspected he'd have a good twelve hours before anyone came knocking on his door for anything.

Still, GFs could be anything from mythological figures to cranky old gods, and it was a good idea to make the effort to get to know your roommates. Especially roommates the size of a planet that were snuggled up to your prefrontal cortex. _Hey,_ Zell said. _You there?_

No response. Zell cast out for a different corner and was about to call again when there came a sensation of parting wheat, a soft yielding surface underneath his foot – rich soil, ready for sowing. _Hi,_ he said.

The wheat shifted again, gently furrowed by wind. _Son of storms._

 _Sure,_ he said. _Or Zell. That's what Ma calls me._

The wheat rippled, and with no warning at all the vision suddenly exploded: a swooping view across plains and mountains and valleys and swinging back again just as abruptly.

 _Interesting,_ Eden said.

Zell tried not to throw up. _What's interesting._

Rather than using words, she did it again. This time the tour was through the airlock chamber of the Ragnarok and down the aisle and into both hangar levels, then out to the ship's nose and down over a hundred meters to her tail. Then everything all together shrank, compressing into a seed that spun gently in the darkness, backlit by its own life force.

 _Okay,_ he said, really just wishing she'd stop doing that. He gripped the sides of the bed hard enough to lose feeling in his fingers. The on-valve of his dizziness was on full force, which was usually enough to trigger the on-valve of his vomit, but Ma had taught him to be polite and that also included not throwing up in gods' faces. _Hey, not to be pushy or anything, but in the future, you mind not mouthing off to Leonhart? Every time you spout off he gets rough with my head._

The wheat parted, revealing a barnyard. Three mother hens by the water spout lifted their heads to the wind, clucking their beaks.

Zell was startled into a laugh. _Try saying that to his face._

Eden flickered in response, creating a sensation behind his teeth not unlike the hum of static.

Okay. Zell tried to relax. _This_ at least was comparable. Quetzalcoatl had communicated mostly through touch and Alexander had thrown anchors so hard into his ethics it'd gotten hard to sort out whose morals were whose. This one, it was just all about immensity. About _space._ Like if he tried to wrap his mind around it all he'd slide right off.

If he weren't so tired it probably would be easier, but that's what years of training was for. You bound yourself up, sucked it up, and kept on marching until the next time you died. _How did you end up down there, anyway?_ he asked.

In his mind's eye, the wheat gradually ground itself away into stone. He felt sun break from the clouds to warm his toes. _Faith,_ was all Eden said.

"The hell's that supposed to mean?"He resisted the urge to shuffle his feet, knowing the sunlight wasn't physical. _How long were you down there?_ he pressed, not sure if she could hear him when he spoke out loud. _In the facility, I mean?_

 _Many lifetimes._

He was about to press further, but there was suddenly dust in his mouth. Startled, Zell coughed, running his tongue along the roof and tasting its metallic tang. The stone around him erupted into a village within the span of a few blinks: a gap-toothed girl with cloth-wrapped feet ran through the streets with a fistful of wildflowers. The world turned and aged, and she grew to marry and give birth to her daughters, and while her daughters grew tall and strong she grew brittle and bitter. When she died, her bones became the bones of the city, and her daughters grew and aged and died while their daughters grew and died, until the entire city eventually collapsed under the weight of its own dead.

"What the fuck," Zell said.

Eden was already moving away. Zell tried to follow up on it, because seriously, what the hell, but dizziness was becoming a real problem. He half-suspected he still needed to throw up but it seemed like too much effort. _Hey,_ he said instead. _I got more questions. Hang on a sec._

The sunlight curled around his feet, encasing them in light before spiraling up his ankles like a vine.

 _Hello?_ he said.

The ship's engines were a lion's rumble. Zell opened his mind to ask again, but the all-encompassing warmth of the stones eventually knocked the energy from him. He closed his eyes, forced them open again.

Eden said, _Sleep._

"Yeah, I don't think so," Zell said. "Quit moving shit around in there. And stop showing me dead things."

The sunlight crept up his hands, his torso, his neck. Eden's voice was the rustle of grass. _The way is vast. Do not fear for your heart._

"I'm not worried about my heart, I'm worried about the furniture. Cut it out."

 _I will not take what is not intended for me. Rest now._

The sunlight had reached his eyes. Dizzy, annoyed, Zell closed them reluctantly, shielding them from the glare.

* * *

.

"You've been asleep for ages," Selphie said.

Zell felt stupid with fatigue. He blinked at the underside of the overhead bunk for a long time, trying to suss out up from down. "Time'sit?"

"About 1100 according to the ship's chrono, but I don't think it's exactly right," Selphie said. "We're pretty close to the ruins of the Galbadia missile base and the waves make everything kinda shaky."

Zell clawed his way up, blinking the gunk from his eyes. He was still a little fuzzy and there was a bad taste in his mouth, but for once the room stayed still and so did his stomach. He ran his tongue over his teeth experimentally and felt the film. "You want some water?" Selphie asked.

He ran his tongue around a while longer. "Sure."

She stood, crossing the cabin in two bouncy strides to access the room's only shelving unit. She was dressed oddly, fatigues on bottom and her trademark yellow dress shoved into them. Her short hair was gathered into a knot under her ear; when she turned to detour by the door, Zell caught a streak of grease along the side of her neck. She slapped the com by the door, bouncing on her toes expectantly until Irvine's drawl came over the speaker. _"Yes, light of my life?"_

"Can you tell Quisty that Zell's awake?"

"What'll you give me?"

"I'll let you keep your pretty nose," she said sweetly.

" _Ten four, little miss."_

"Tell me you weren't here the whole time I was out," Zell said.

"Nah, just for like, an hour." She moved to the shelving unit and retrieved a thermos, popping the spout up with a careless flick of her thumb. "We've been dropping in to check on you. I mean it, you've been sleeping for like, a day and a half. Irvine wanted to draw a mustache on you with engine grease, but Quisty said no."

"I miss somethin'?" He squinted at her. "Why're you dressed like that?"

"Um, nothing more or less, we're just having some mechanical issues." She passed along the thermos, and he paused long enough to take a long, greedy drag. "When you're feeling better you can check it out," Selphie said, watching him. "Something keeps like… vibrating, you know? Rattling I guess. I dunno how to describe it exactly."

 _This_ got his attention. As secondary pilot and chief mechanic, he'd gotten plenty intimate with the Raganrok these last couple of weeks, tooling around down in her belly so he could check out what the hell they were flying in. Some of the stuff down there was beyond him, technology from another time and place, but a lot of the rest was intuitive. Most machines with moving parts breathed pretty much the same when it came right down to it. "All the time?"

"More like, when I speed up?"

Driveshaft? Coolant conduit? The propulsion nozzles? Any one of those was bad news. "On it," he said, swinging his legs off the bunk.

"Woah woah woah, hey hey hey." She hastily pushed him back down against the pillows. "Quisty says you can't get up until Doctor Kadowaki checks you out. I just wanted to tell you so maybe you could mull it over, you know? Give you something to think about."

"S'fine, I swear." He did knock the rest of the water in the thermos back, though, swishing it between his teeth. He handed it off to her and reached up to knock his temple with his knuckles. "Nothing rattling."

"We're going to be stopping soon anyway, and Squall won't want the bird all gutted and stuff while we're there. As a matter of fact…" She paused with her finger up in the air, cocking her head. As if on cue, the tone in the engine changed. Zell felt the craft begin to decelerate. "There we go!" Selphie said cheerfully. "Hopefully Quisty doesn't break off the landing gear this time. That took ages to fix."

"Where're we dropping?"

"We're stopping into Hell for a bit. Farming. Normally we'd, you know, we'd wait, but Irvy's gun got damaged in the fight and Squall doesn't want him to downgrade with things all wonky-doo. I better get going."

"Wait up, I'll go with you." Probably dinosaur bones, if they were talking Irvine's weapon. No way in hell was he letting Squall face one of those things without him. He jumped off the bed, and this time Selphie wasn't quick enough to stop him. "Just lemme get dressed."

"Ohhh, c'mon, no, Quisty will kill me," she whined, hastily setting the thermos aside. "Just stay here or something. I can bring you a magazine and you can look up more ways to beat up people. You like doing that."

He cast about for his shirt and found it draped over the top bunk. He snatched it down and pulled it on. "Oh Hyne," Selphie said. "You know what, _fine._ But not with me, okay? Wait until I'm gone and _then_ bust out. That way I can say I didn't see you do it."

"Sure, sure." His hair was a mess but there was no time to fix it. He ruffled the front with his fingers, tucked whatever didn't obey him behind his ears, and performed another quick search for his shoes. Under the bed.

The call of _all hands_ came over the comm. Selphie was already sprinting out the door. She poked her head back in long enough to say, "And remember, this _wasn't_ my idea," before disappearing again. Her footsteps rapidly faded down the hall.

Zell plunked back down on the bed long enough to pull on his shoes. As he tied them he cautiously opened his mind a little, poking around in the corners. Quetzalcoatl as usual responded first, filling his nose with the comforting scent of ozone. Alexander was close on her heels, straightening his back, filling his ears with the thunder-clang of church bells.

Zell did a quick warm-up stretch, cricking a back stiff from sleep and propping his toes against the wall to stretch his calves. When he cast further down the back of his mind, nothing turned up but a vague sensation of mist: a flash of the space between the stars.

Huh, he thought, a little mystified. He nabbed his gloves off the shelving unit, fastened the buckles over his wrists, then swung himself down through the shortcut he'd made weeks earlier: through a loose panel in his floor, dropping into a narrow ancillary cargo area illuminated solely by the light streaming in from the trapdoor on the other side. Slithering past the gloomy outline of spare parts and crates, flapping a hand to prevent the dust from making its way up his nose, he scooted down into the square of light.

Squall, in the process of checking Lionheart's barrel in the loading dock, didn't spare him a glance as he dropped down out of the ceiling. "Off-duty, Dincht."

"You know me, baby, I like workin' overtime." Zell bounced on his heels a bit. He felt pretty good. Almost kind of bizarrely good considering the circumstances.

Squall squinted down the length of the blade. "Make yourself useful around the bird if you're feeling frisky."

"Show me someone other than me who's fast enough to back you up after a tail swipe and I'll be all over that." He'd be courting insubordination with any other commander, but Squall was a strange animal. Sometimes he stressed protocol and sometimes he didn't. It usually depended on how bored he was, because as facts went, the whole team had seen him jump off a cliff once just because it was the fastest way to the bottom. "Even at fifty percent, you _know_ how hard I hit, man. Lemme go out, I need some air."

"And just what will you do if your new summon decides to run away with you?" Quistis's no-nonsense voice floated towards them just before she rounded the bend, new whip in hand. She cracked it against the floor, warming up her wrist, then drew it into a coil and fastened it to her belt. When she turned to fix her unyielding gaze on Zell, he gave her an open-mouthed grin and a thumbs-up. "There are more than enough capable soldiers to handle this," she said, rolling her eyes. "You should spend this time resting and acclimatizing yourself to your new summon."

"Already done that," he said, which was a pretty outrageous fucking lie. "I'm all ready to roll."

"You have no scope or scale of the GF's abilities—"

"Heyyy gang!" Selphie's too-cheerful voice effortlessly soared above their conversation as she rounded the bend. Irvine and Rinoa were close behind, the latter strapping on her Angelwing and giving him a co-conspiratorial wink. "Good day for some harvesting, right? By the way, totally not my fault he's out of bed, just so everybody knows."

Zell could hear the song of sunlight on the other side of the door. At the moment he barely even cared if he fought. The need to see sky was sweet and strong and there were wings inside him that didn't belong to him.

Finally appearing satisfied with his inspection, Squall swung his weapon into the harness on his hip. Only then did he look at Zell, and despite himself Zell straightened a little. "If you slow us down, you're back on the ship," Squall said. "No arguments. No exceptions."

Ignoring Quistis' look of exasperation, Zell easily transferred his thumbs-up to Squall. "Yessir."

* * *

.

They were unlucky enough to encounter a Malboro first and lucky enough for Selphie to pull out one of her terrifying limit breaks by chance, just in time to avoid real hurt. After a quick application of antidotes and eyedrops, they settled down into a loose rotation – two battles with one team, two with the other, rinse and repeat.

The cloudless sky rendered everything almost uncomfortably warm, but the work was quick and productive. Within an hour they had most of what they needed, barring a few additional scraps from the next unfortunate T-Rexaur to cross their path.

All in all, Zell reflected as the party stopped to check inventory, they were a completely different group than the one that had stumbled out of Balamab a month ago. Their battles had started out about as organized as a Delling bar brawl. Now fighting had rhythm, had symmetry. If one person dropped the ball, the other would be there to pick it up. There was still some showboating, a few miscommunications here and there, but overall, they were in synch. It was strange but it worked.

He figured some of that was owed to experience and some to Squall's leadership, but it really all came down to trust. Having a team to rely on, to bounce ideas off of, to count on _you…_ that wasn't something that could be manufactured in academy drills. That took people willing to put up with you long enough to want to die beside you.

He was preoccupied enough with the pleasure of being topside, of beating shit up and having room to cut loose to do that, that it took him a while to realize something was off. He began to notice it around the hour mark, right around the time they were clearing out a ravine and his fist landed on the blue dragon scale next to the one he'd meant to hit.

The thing still went down, but that wasn't the point. He hadn't gotten to be an expert martial artist by missing his mark. He tried again the next battle and it happened again, and then again. It seemed like wherever he looked light seemed to be in his face. The shine on Squall's hip chains, the sparkle on the sea, the glint of Quistis's hair clip.

On the next lull, Zell swiped some drops from the supply bag and spent a minute flushing out his eyes. It helped a little but not a lot. The area around him stayed overbright and disconcertingly crisp. Dragon scales like miniature suns, grass as green as new recruits.

 _What the hell,_ he asked Quetzalcoatl. The answer was a stirring of wings akin to a shrug. They battled two Malboros next, back to back; Selphie and Rinoa looted the corpses while Quistis applied a salve to a chemical burn on the back of Squall's neck, and they spent a few minutes on the hill, regrouping, getting back some wind.

Zell bent to tie his shoelace, and the brightness in his head suddenly became a flood, bringing with it a wave of disjointed images. Goddamn it, he thought, steadying himself quickly on the ground. It was one thing to brush off some minor disorientation. But this was The Island Closest to Hell and there were other people here besides himself, and a psychotic break wasn't something that could be cured with eyedrops.

He crouched there long after the visions stopped, staring hard at his shoe. Eventually Irvine must have noticed something amiss, because he loped up amiably a minute later, boots swishing in the ankle-high grass. "Find somethin' good?"

Zell watched the toe of his shoe. The brightness relocated, and once again his peripherals encroached on his center vision with painful, sharp-edged clarity.

"Hey. You alive in there?"

Zell shook his head slowly, not in dissent.

"Squall," Irvine said.

Squall was over to them within seconds. "Status," he said, dropping to a knee and fishing in an inner pocket of his jacket.

"I'm…" Puzzled, Zell blinked at the ground. Was he _hungry?_ The sensation faded, leaving him more confused than before. "Uh," he said coherently.

"Can you go on?"

Zell blinked again, hard, but the feeling of brightness, of static, remained. "Don't think so," he said. "Sorry, man. Thought I had this."

"No shame." Squall pushed a tiny bottle into his hand. Luv Luv G extract. "Kinneas will take you back to the ship. Wire ahead to Balamb – we're almost done here anyway. Ready the ship for launch."

Zell took Irvine's proffered hand. The sun gleamed off the buckles on Irvine's duster, momentarily dazzling him; the next thing he realized, Irvine was steadying him with an arm around his waist. "C'mon, princess," Irvine said. "Let's get you back to your fainting couch where you can swoon with some dignity."

"Fuck you," Zell said. "I didn't see you putting your fist into a T-Rexaur's eye today."

"That's 'cause sensible men use technology to fight," Irvine said, completely unaffected as usual by Zell's temper. "Like god intended. Also, I'm calling up your Ma to tell her you swore."

Zell felt a little extra sweat break out between his shoulder blades, but he said stubbornly, "I'm just saying, don't go around dissing me when you can't even—"

A roar interrupted them, making the earth beneath their feet tremble. Quistis's yell for Squall came from over the hill a second later, the sound of it as sharp as the crack of her whip. Squall unhooked his gunblade and sprinted away without so much as a glance back at the two of them. "Damn it," Zell said. "Go. I can take myself back."

"Me, leave a damsel in distress? Fine day to ruin my reputation." Irvine jogged the back of Zell's leg with a nudge from his knee. "Besides, the sooner we get back, the certain I can raid the ice-box for the rest of those little ice-cream cups Selphie picked up in Delling."

"There's something wrong with you," Zell said. "Is that the only thing you ever think about?"

"What? Selphie or ice-cream cups? Or Selphie's ice-cream cups?"

Zell almost hit him. "Quit _talking about boobs._ "

The earth shook. This time Zell's ears pricked at the distinctive muddy roar of a hexadragon. _Great_. That right there had been the entire reason he'd come out. The Ragnarok came into sight at the top of the hill with the gleam of fresh blood under sunlight. He'd have to make it up somehow. Maybe tomorrow they could come back for some more harvesting, and he could show Squall that he—

Somewhere deep in the back of his skull, something whispered to life.

Irvine nearly tripped over him. "Hey." Irvine nudged his leg, but Zell didn't start walking again. "What gives? Let's go. I want to get in there before the battle's over."

His thoughts were a static hum. Zell tilted his head to dislodge their weight. " _Zell_." Irvine jogged the back of his leg again with his knee. "Don't space out on me."

Zell let his eyelids fall to half mast. The scents that had previously been muted now swarmed to him on the wind: grass and steel and leather and salt. The sweet tang of rot. He turned his head to let his ear pick the sounds out of the same breeze. Blades on scale, bone-jarring thuds of impact. Claws furrowing into soft earth.

"Woah woah woah _woah_ _woah_." Irvine's grip tightened in a hurry when Zell tried to turn around. "Don't even think about it. You heard Leonhart. They can handle themselves."

Zell was barely listening. The ocean was a steady stream of static to his right. He tried to turn around again, but Irvine readjusted his grip and gave him a brutal shake. "Damn it, you deaf? _Keep walking_."

"I'm fine," he heard himself say.

"Yeah you're fine, you're just having a pleasant little psychotic episode in the middle of Hell. Pull it the fuck together."

Over the hill the beast roared again. Something in his head went _click,_ and Zell opened his eyes.

Irvine let out a startled curse as Zell surged into action. Zell swung his fist, got Irvine in the shoulder, on the side of the head, and then Irvine was fighting back, juggling his flailing limbs, hooking an ankle around his and wrestling him to the ground. Zell threw a guided elbow into Irvine's stomach and knocked the wind out of him, and Irvine's grip loosened just enough for Zell to struggle free.

Zell had barely found his feet before Irvine was lunging at him from behind, getting an arm around his neck and choking off most of the airflow. Zell twisted, snarling between his teeth, but Irvine's stance was planted and he'd gotten a solid hold. "Okay," Irvine muttered in his ear. He sounded equal parts pissed and worried. "Okay, okay. Easy. Just take it easy."

Zell struggled mindlessly, sucking in ribbons of air until his vision began to spot. Irvine was murmuring something else to him. For a moment the static in Zell's ears eased, and there was a spark of sunlight in him that dissipated some of the fog.

Then the breeze shifted; his nostrils flared again to take in the coppery scent of blood, and the static returned to overtake the rest of him.

He stomped, getting the top of Irvine's foot by chance. Irvine hissed, relenting a fraction but not letting go. The fraction was all Zell needed. He threw another elbow to loosen him up, twisted his head, and bit down as hard as he could. There was a rush of salty fluid between his teeth. "Son of a bitch," Irvine gritted, keeping a hand fisted in his shirt, and let him go just long enough to deck him across the face.

It hurt but pain had become inconsequential. Zell caught Irvine's retreating palm between his thumb and forefinger, yanking sideways and up with all his strength. The joint crunched and Irvine howled, and then there was nothing holding Zell back anymore.

He was off before he'd given his feet the command, running until the battle unfolded before him, bringing color and shape into the wash of earth-shattering noise. He vaguely heard Squall shout in alarm but it was too late. Zell was the yellow in the dragon's eyes and the glint on its teeth and the roar of the sea. The hexadragon spun to meet him, mouth open in a snarl.

The sun and the wind and the toothless, gaping horror inside him spoke as one. _Devour._

The dragon's life was a grain of sand.


	3. Chapter 3

_Zell._

Memories bubbled out like an underwater scream. There were boots and raised voices and the sensation of rain on his head even as the sun scorched the top of his shoulders.

 _Zell,_ Rinoa said.

 _I hear you,_ he said, a little irritably. He was trying to concentrate.

 _You're stuck in a summoning loop. I can overpower you, but it'll hurt. You have to try to let go on your own._

 _I think I screwed up,_ he admitted. He felt drowsy and a little drunk. He could feel her continue to untangle him in the background, delicately loosening his hold on something like a seamstress plucking out stitches. _Is Leonhart mad?_

She either didn't hear him or was too busy to answer. She pressed a hand against his forehead. There was a flutter of wings and a snap of static electricity, and Zell realized he could feel Quetzalcoatl trying to rise from under his skin. _Let go,_ Rinoa said.

There was spiky grass poking into the backs of his thighs. He felt like he'd just eaten through the entire kitchen at Garden's cafeteria and chased it down with some of the potted plants. _It's over,_ Rinoa said, and once again Zell got the sensation she was speaking over him. _Let go._

He was tired anyway. He let her unravel a bit more of him, disentangling him from the mire of color in his head, before he loosened his grip for himself. Instantly the sounds in his head were silenced, and the prickling sensation of Quetzalcoatl squirming under his skin disappeared. "Got him," Rinoa said, sounding relieved.

Someone spoke to her outside his sphere of concentration. "I'm not sure," Rinoa said. "He's responding to me, but it's almost as if…"

Zell tried to open his eyes and couldn't. Words and intentions and actions were out of synch in his head. _Zell._ Rinoa's voice returned to address him. _The battle is over. We're heading back to the ship, okay?_

 _Sure,_ he said. He wondered if Irvine would save him any ice-cream cups.

He felt her hesitate again. Her fingertips found his forehead again, skating off the sweat and settling along his hairline. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think he was speaking in another language," she said.

He was getting sleepy. He could tell the sky was blue without opening his eyes. He'd never skipped class in his life but now seemed like a pretty good time to give it a shot. _Go to sleep, okay?_ Rinoa said, condoning his truancy a moment later. She was a good friend. He could see why Squall liked her. _Everything will be okay._

 _Sure,_ he said. He was already mostly there anyway.

* * *

.

— come to think of it, he _had_ known another language once, hadn't he.

* * *

.

He knew he was back on the Ragnarok by the way the world breathed around him. Someone had tucked the blankets from portside storage around him and his forehead was prickling under a compress, and voices kept swinging in and out of his periphery like a fist waiting to blindside him. He knew his body well enough to recognize fever, but the zombie parade of long-buried memories was too vivid not to be GF-induced.

He felt his reality swerve like raindrops on a window. Trying to tame a wild Mesmerize at age six and breaking his arm when it'd bucked him off into a ravine. Getting lost exploring the Centra forests and spending the night up in a tree. Later memories were painted with bolder colors, like the time he'd spent hours battling thorns in the garden with Ellone to earn the rights to pick the raspberries. He'd secretly pocketed the juiciest ones for Selphie and had later watched her cram the squashed bounty into her mouth all at once, greedy little feral thing, still prone to filching from countertops after months spent starving on the streets. It'd taken her almost two weeks to start speaking to any of them, and once she'd started she'd never stopped, hungry for something more than what stolen food could get her.

Zell's first days at the orphanage had been eaten up the instant he'd plugged in Quetzalcoatl, but they came back to him now on a vibrant tide of synythesia. He'd started out just as quiet as Selphie, but it'd been because he'd been unable to speak more than a few words of the local dialect. Matron had tutored him relentlessly on vocabulary, but it'd been a problem of screwy syntax more than anything. His mother tongue had just diagrammed sentences differently. Clustering verbs at the end of sentences, putting adjectives after nouns instead of before. Desperate to bridge the gap in communication, Zell had quickly learned to overcompensate with hand gestures and body language to help the other children translate what he was trying to say. By the time the need for it had waned, the habit was too ingrained for him to stop.

Eden could have spoken to him in any language, which meant of course that she chose to rip the scab off that one, letting it bubble back up like old blood. The accent sounded like loss in his ear. Metallic _a's_ and _i's_ , consonants that hurt his teeth and diphthongs that scraped his tongue dry. _Leave me alone,_ Zell said, too tired for good manners. He wasn't sure if he was speaking in Galbadian standard or the language of his birth mother's lullabies. It was all the same. _I'm trying to sleep._

Tendrils of her presence continued to tease out color and sound, projecting the memories onto the backdrop of his mind without particular order. The first time his grandfather had taken him fishing off the Balamb docks. Baking cinnamon apple toast with Ma. Nearly losing his eye to a snapped violin string.

 _Okay._ He tried to dig in his heels, but the memories were smearing like someone flipping through a magazine. His first kiss. Somersaults down the hills outside the orphanage with Quistis. The fireworks on the beach. His first loose tooth. _Okay,_ he thought, chest heaving with growing panic. _Okay okayokayokay—_

Quetzalcoatl wasn't strong enough to challenge Eden directly, but Alexander was quicker anyway. Halfway down a casual slide into insanity, Zell felt his body jerk as if yanked by an anchor, and the memories were abruptly drowned out by the crash of bells. The mountains parted to let in the light, and the rest of the procession shattered like stained glass.

The rooting in his brain stopped.

Gasping into his pillow, trying to gather up some spare scraps of personal dignity, Zell had the weird sensation of squabbling parents squaring off across a kitchen table. _Ah,_ Eden said presently. _My apologies. I had not realized._

 _S'okay,_ Zell said, trying really, really hard not to burst into tears in front of a girl. Snot would get everywhere and he had no way of knowing who else was around to make fun of him for it. _What are you doing?_

 _You are very interesting._

Alexander's presence orbited his consciousness like a revolving gear. It embarrassed Zell how much it reassured him. Like a parent holding their child's hand as they crossed the street, except that Eden's street stretched off into oblivion and Alexander's mom-arm could only reach so far.

Zell knew he had to distract himself or the fear would pull him right back in. He breathed slowly and deeply for a while, letting everything stand by without his input. He had the sense that there was something else he was supposed to attend to, but for the moment it was all he could take to keep himself anchored to the present.

He bought himself time. _What's interesting?_

 _You are descended from the great settlers of the north. Bull-walkers, stone-shapers._

Zell tensed with dread as memories shifted on the backdrop again, but this time the transition was noticeably gentler. He was knee-deep in drifts and squinting into a horizon choked with snow. There were pelts drying on pegs and skins stretched so tightly on the tanning racks that they hummed in the wind. The people traveled in herds, carving their history into the earth long before their settlements took root.

 _These were my ancestors?_ Despite his intention to stall, Zell was genuinely interested. _Ma never told me._

 _She does not share the story of your blood._ The landscape changed as he watched: the tents becoming huts, becoming houses, becoming buildings. They crumbled in the wars and rose again and crumbled again, building centuries upon centuries of bones, until their remnants were stamped deep out of reach into the earth. _But regardless of origin, all civilizations are founded upon the same incentive. The only question is how much they are willing to consume to satiate that need._

He was caught by the literal undercurrent of bitterness – a sudden, brackish stream that cut through the blaze of sun-polished snow. _What need?_

 _Hunger,_ Eden said.

Zell felt the universe inside him expand and wane, like a chest filling with air and decompressing under pressure. _The motivations of all mortals can be distilled into a single purpose,_ Eden said. _One by one you devour all which lies around you, and when there is nothing left to pillage from your own lands, you turn on one another and devour the bounty of your neighbors. Endlessly, mindlessly, cyclically you feed, until all the glory and color from your past is bleached like bones on the sand, and your hunger turns inward to devour what's left. It is the fate all you mortals share._

Zell could feel his physical body break out into a cold sweat even as the world inside him continued to confuse his senses. The breeze that hit his face was probably from the heating vents over his bunk, but it held the bite of the north: frozen earth and pine and sweet, decaying underbrush. Scents he'd loved and then forgotten the instant he'd fallen in love with the sea.

He asked, _What are you?_

 _I am formed of all things,_ Eden said. _Dew and drought. Life and rot. Desire and altruism. All beginnings and all ends, without beginning or end, because there is no beginning or end to me._

There wasn't a whole hell of a lot to say to that. Zell fished for something for a while before blurting, _So no birthday parties, then?_

Her laughter was wholly unexpected – the delighted bell-tones of a young girl. It hurt his head. It all hurt. He wanted to crawl into his own brain and scrub everything out until it gleamed like glass. It didn't help that his thoughts were clear enough now to remember why he was here and what he'd done, and the urgency to wake up and make it right was making even this earth-shattering conversation seem irrelevant. _What you had me doing on the field,_ he said. _Is that going to happen a lot? Me wigging out?_

 _I am acclimating myself to the space. The disorientation is a minor byproduct of that process._

 _I hit Irvine._ He could feel Ragnarok shift gears as she lowered altitude. He wanted to be in her belly or at her controls or practicing his fifth kata in her hold, not piled on his rickety bunk with his past stretched out before him like a runway. _Maybe it doesn't matter to you, but I could've killed him hitting him with my gloves on. You can't do that. You have business with me, you can't take it out on people around me._

There was nothing for a long time. Then he felt the phantom touch of a blade of grass against his knuckles, soft and sullen as a child's apology.

 _What were you looking for?_ His increasing awareness of the physical world signified the end of the conversation, but he clung on a minute longer, trying to pry the answers from her silence. _Irvine tried to Draw you at the start of the fight, but you shook him off. Why did you let me take you out instead?_

The stars continued to fade. Zell vaguely could feel his bed dip as someone sat down on the edge, resting a hand across his forehead. The words were indistinct but the presence wasn't, and Zell knew that any remaining time could be cut in half now that Rinoa's powers were about to wade into the fray. _There's gotta be a reason you chose me,_ he pressed. _Why didn't you go over to Leonhart when he asked? What are you looking for?_

Eden said, with impressions more than words, _There was no room for me in his heart._

 _But there was room in mine?_

The trail of her funneled out with the starlight, and once again Zell was left behind in the middle of the conversation.

* * *

.

He woke up with his ass hanging out of a clinic gown, flanked by gently-whirring medical equipment and what felt like a raging hangover.

Groaning with irritation, Zell plastered his palms over his eyes to block out the light as he took stock of his situation. The clinic air was artificially warmed and stood a good ten degrees higher than the rest of Garden, but bare asses and exposed ankles were notorious for losing heat. He could feel the goosebumps on his legs as he cautiously flexed his toes, bent his knees. When he tested the range of his elbows and wrists he was rewarded with only minor resistance – probably stiffness from not stretching after the battles in Hell. Just to be safe he gave his fingers and toes a waggle, but nothing appeared to be lopped off or broken.

He was already contemplating ways to escape out the window when a sound to his left caught his attention. Realizing belatedly that he wasn't alone, Zell moved his palms and let his head flop to the side so he could blink over. Irvine was sitting in a chair beside him, duster off, hat on, feet slung up on the end of the bed. He was carving something from a block of wood with a knife that looked like it had been fashioned out of a T-Rexaur claw. Exeter was leaning against the armrest like an attentive spouse. "Boots?" Zell said. His voice scraped like a rusty hinge. "Seriously?"

"They're clean," Irvine drawled, not looking up. There were wood shavings all over the clean floor. "I made sure to wipe 'em clean with one of your shirts."

"What the hell, man."

"Trust me, you don't want them off." Irvine gathered his knife and his carving into one hand and flailed over at the bedside table, sliding a mug off. He held it out to Zell handle first. "Want some? Selphie had some this morning and I think she's still stuck on the ceiling of the training center."

It smelled like it could be coffee or maybe grat piss. "No thanks," Zell said. " _Boots_?"

Irvine pointed one booted toe and hooked it behind the cuff of the other, sliding it down an inch or two to reveal bare skin. The resulting smell was worse than the coffee. "Fine," Zell said. "Where's Squall?"

"Wading through about fifteen thousand mission reports. That research center is a nasty giant opened can of worms as far as Garden's concerned." Irvine pushed the sole of his boot against the side of the mattress until his foot slid back in. "Figure I don't get paid for that kind of administrative bullshit, so I might as well leave it to him."

"Is that why you're hiding here?" Irvine was parked under a shaft of natural light from the overhead window. He looked bizarrely out of place in the crisp, sterile room, but Zell's sense of reality was off-kilter, so a part of him wasn't sure if he wasn't imagining the entire visit in the first place. "Or did Selphie kick you out?"

"You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to undersell my god-given charm." Irvine bent over, rummaging through something near his feet. "Probably shouldn't be throwing stones, y'know, seeing as the only girls _you've_ picked up are all in your head."

… that was actually pretty funny, but it wouldn't do any good to let Irvine know it. "And the only boobs you've touched have been broken off statues, so I guess we both got stones to throw."

"Listen to you," Irvine whistled. He continued to sort beside his chair for something out of Zell's sight. He emerged a moment later he straightened with a grunt, and Zell recognized his own field canteen. "Here," Irvine said, and worked a hand under Zell's shoulders to help him sit up against the pillows. "Figure it'd be embarrassing to survive a deep sea dive only to drown in your canteen, am I right?"

"Thanks," Zell said, kind of taken aback by the attention. A cautious swallow revealed that the canteen was full of fresh, cold water, as though Irvine had thought to replace it throughout the day. "Hey, thanks, man," Zell said again, sincerely this time.

"I'll see about getting you the hard stuff later. Still trying to figure out how to IV curly fries." Irvine settled back in his chair with a good natured grunt, rescuing his carving and his knife from the bedside table.

Zell took another, longer swig from the canteen, taking the time to look around the room. The privacy curtain was pulled across the space, but he could tell from the heft of the wall behind Irvine that Kadowaki had put him in the farthest cubicle. Judging by the intensity of the light coming in through the window, it was probably midday, which meant he'd slept at least twelve hours. Irvine himself looked like he'd been settled in for a while, if the stack of magazines next to the bed and the puddle of shavings on the floor said anything. "Lot of volatile stuff down there in that hellhole," Irvine added unexpectedly, off-handedly, peeling off a curl. "Research in there alone would be worth a fortune, plus you've got all those raw supplies, old tech – engineers at FH would cream their coveralls to get their hands on it. Plus you got, y'know, you got researchers who'd want to study the wildlife in there, seeing as it broke off from the norm about a hundred years ago."

"And let me guess," Zell said. "Everybody else wants in."

"Legally, we have to report the situation to Esthar so they can decide whether or not to decontaminate. Anyone else…" Irvine shrugged. "Reports get lost in transit all the time, though. You know how it is."

Zell wasn't sure how to feel. He usually preferred to go by the book on these things, but there'd been something about the place that'd knocked things loose from them and hadn't bothered to put them back up on their shelves. He knew without a doubt that he never wanted to set foot in the research center again, but the thought of anyone _else_ in there – sorting through the tech, harvesting the flora, messing with the infrastructure – gave him a crawling feeling of possessiveness he couldn't explain. He could maybe blame it on some residual side-effect of junctioning Eden, but judging from the set of Irvine's shoulders, the others felt the same way. Just another punishment they'd picked up for trespassing in someone else's tomb.

He decided to change the subject. "How'd I get here?"

"Brought you in on a litter. You were kind of conscious but not enough to help. Some girls made some googly eyes at you though, might want to check that out."

"Oh yeah?" He was interested but mostly just kind of grimy. He wondered if Kadowaki would okay a shower. "You get any of their names?"

"What makes you think I didn't already have them?" Irvine laughed, peeling off another neat strip of cedar. The shavings continued to fall with cherry blossom-delicacy around him, as though a wind were dislodging them one by one from a summering tree.

Zell reached out and caught Irvine's forearm before it could make the next cut. He felt the muscles underneath tense, felt Irvine try to angle the knife away. "You all right?" Zell asked.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Irvine drawled. "Selphie hits harder than that when she's squashing bugs. We laughed at you back on the ship."

"Hey," Zell said. Seriously, because this shit was serious and Irvine's nonchalant dismissal wasn't going to cut it this time. "I'll write it up, man. Just say the word."

"Dincht, you were so far around the twist you were walking up your own ass. What makes you think anyone's writing you up for this? The first time I junctioned Siren I woke up in Garden's fountain wearing only my guitar. And there were fresh recruits right there in the hall. Honest to god eleven year-old girls."

Zell stole Irvine's hand before he could dodge and splayed out the fingers to examine them. He twisted Irvine's arm expertly, rotating the joint, and only got raised eyebrows for his trouble. No bruising, no grind, no broken skin. No damage. Either Rinoa's work or Kadowaki's or both.

He let Irvine go, heart hammering with relief. "If you really feel like apologizing, go hit up the girls," Irvine said, getting back to his carving as though he hadn't been interrupted. "Scared the frills right out of them."

"The girls?" He was taken aback. "What about them? What did I do?"

This one Irvine didn't answer immediately, which was telltale. Irvine loved gossip even more than Selphie. It could be that he was trying to phrase it right, spare Zell's feelings, but more than likely Squall had issued some kind of gag order and Irvine was debating whether or not to obey it. "At least tell me I didn't screw up the harvest," Zell said.

"Nah, went fine."

"Did I hurt them?"

"Who, the girls? No."

"Did we beat the dragon?"

Irvine squinted one eye closed.

Zell's heart began to flutter. "Did I get anyone hurt?"

"No."

"Did the dragon hurt anyone else?"

"No."

Then what the hell. Zell looked over Irvine's posture but it wasn't yielding. Irvine was emotive as hell when the mood struck him, but he was also one of the best sharpshooters in the world. His hands were moving, but everything else was preternaturally still, as though he'd been carved out along with the furniture.

"Did I summon?"

Irvine said nothing.

"Did the summon hurt anyone?"

"No."

"Tell me what I did," Zell said.

Irvine snapped his wrist. The shaving curled to the floor and the curtains over the window shifted, and for a moment the light in the room seemed to fall anywhere but him, bouncing off the knife, the ceiling fixtures, the weather-worn bone of Exeter's barrel. "You got hungry," Irvine said.

"So, what, I ate the rations?"

Irvine blew the wood dust off the knife.

Zell stared at him. Then smell and touch and taste clicked together in his head, and he gripped the edge of the bed while his stomach roiled and his skin buzzed, and he suddenly knew, with terrible and colorful clarity, exactly what it was he'd eaten.

Irvine knocked his hat up from his eyes with the hilt of the knife, shuffled both knife and carving into one hand, and reached down with the other to pick up the basin previously hidden over the side of the bed. "Did I share?" Zell asked faintly, taking it from him.

"No, but you excused yourself when you burped. Your ma'd be proud."

"Was there any dragon left?"

"Yeah, but the cafeteria confiscated it to pad out the hot dogs," Irvine said, and _then_ Zell threw up, which had probably been Irvine's plan for revenge all along, the fucker.

* * *

.

He ended up staying overnight as a precaution, but for the most part Kadowaki's treatment had already knocked most of the evils out of him. He submitted to a battery of tests the next day while Selphie puttered around the clinic in her capacity as student volunteer, which Kadowaki repeatedly and vehemently denied consenting to. "Just because I'm on an elite military team destined to save the world doesn't mean I'm not responsible for my club chores anymore," Selphie argued, voice muffled as she fished inside the lower cupboards.

"That's exactly what it means, and _get out of my storage_ ," Kadowaki said. "You're no longer a student here and I'm no longer mandated by law to put up with you. _Out._ Take your mess with you."

"Can I go too?" Zell was getting restless and hoping to hit up the cafeteria before they ran out of bagels. "I've checked out, right?"

"You stay where you are." Kadowaki listened a moment longer, then lifted the bell of the stethoscope and slid the earpieces from her ears. A reflex hammer to both his knees had his feet jumping for the second time that day, and with a dissatisfied expression Kadowaki was back to writing on her chart. "Your reflexes are delayed."

"I know. Just need a chance to synch up."

"You'll be a liability in the field if this keeps up. I'm going to prescribe you some liquid para-stabilizer. The script will say twice a day – one dram morning and night – but you can take it during the day if the GF starts to act out of turn. Don't exceed five doses a day or you'll risk toxicity."

"Gross," Zell said. "There is like no danger whatsoever of that. Do you have orange? That's the only one that doesn't make me yack."

"Nope to the orange," Selphie called, still waist-deep in the storage cabinets. "We got, um, mint, vanilla, coconut, and," there was a pause and some rummaging, "berry. Take your pick."

" _Gross,_ " Zell said. "What kind of mint?"

"Spearmint. Wait, I just found peppermint!" Selphie emerged with an armful of bottles. "Here," Selphie said, tossing one at Zell, who caught it and gagged. "Just do that one. It doubles as mouthwash."

"Doubles as—" He looked at her again. "You tryin' to start something?"

"What? No. What, like we all can't use a little mouthwash? You guys are gross on the field. I know for a fact you don't pack extra underwear."

He totally did because Ma would somehow find out if he didn't, but he wasn't about to have this conversation in front of witnesses. "Look, can't I just have pills? I'm used to the pills."

"There's a manufacturing shortage, so all pills are being saved for field use," Kadowaki said. "When you go on assignment I'll switch you over, but as long as you're in Garden I'll need you to put up with the liquid. Tilmitt, _get out of there._ "

"You know half of this stuff back here is expired, right?" Selphie's rear was sticking out of the cupboards again. Things continued to clatter and roll out onto the floor. "If we clean it out you'll have a _lot_ more room. You know, while we're at the don't I just come in every day? I could do wonders with this place. I can talk to Squall and have my roster hours changed so I can spend more time in here with you."

"Hyne, just kill me," Kadowaki muttered. "Zell, pick a flavor and get out of here while I'm still one aneurysm short of retirement. Tilmitt, dissect one more cabinet and I'm locking you in there. Why am I still here? Why didn't I take that job on that island out by Centra?"

"Oooh, speaking of island, we can always mix the vanilla and coconut and have a tropical smoothie flavor," Selphie told Zell. "Are you sure you don't want those two? We can add some mint leaves and have a party out on the boarding deck."

"I'll stick with peppermint," Zell said, mostly because Kadowaki's expression was lifting the hairs on the back of his neck. He waited for her to write his discharge slip, then hopped off the bed and toed on his shoes. A kick had Selphie scrambling up as well, leaving an ocean of displaced medical equipment on the floor. "Do I gotta check back in?"

"The slip says to come see me in forty-eight hours," Kadowaki said. "If not, I'll hunt you down. No missions until then."

"Aw, c'mon."

"Training is fine. Field work isn't. Forty-eight hours."

Rolling his eyes but knowing better than to argue the point, Zell remapped his plans in his heads while he bounded to the door. Distracted as he was, he nearly ran straight into Squall as the door to the infirmary suddenly wooshed up.

Zell ground to a halt to stare at him, bouncing on his toes to soak up the momentum. Squall looked rangier than he had a few days ago, tired and taut and fed-up despite it only being a little after noon. He refocused on Zell immediately, gaze raking him up and down with expressionless assessment.

Kind of wondering what Squall was doing here but more than willing to stay out of his way while he did it, Zell made a move to eel around him. To his surprise Squall merely said, "Have you been released?"

"Huh?"

"Have you been discharged?"

"Yeah, I'm cleared."

"For combat?"

"Sure," Zell said, still blankly, and Kadowaki called from behind him, "Probation."

"Restrictions?" Squall spoke over his shoulder.

"No ice, absolutely no status effects, and he needs to keep his head out of the way. I'll reassess his condition in forty-eight hours. In the meantime, non-impact training only."

"Aw, _c'mon_ ," Zell said.

"Damp?" Squall asked.

"If it's warm. Any disorientation at all, send him back to me."

"Check." Squall turned around. "Drop your stuff off, grab your gear, and meet me in the training center at 1300."

"Dude, it's lunchtime," Zell said.

Squall didn't stop. "Good. Come hungry."

* * *

.

GFs had to carve out a section of the brain to live in, which meant that sooner or later you came across chunks of memory that weren't strictly yours. Zell had commiserated with Rinoa over it in particular, because while all of them could throw out Cures, she was the only other person besides him on the team who knew what it felt like to have centuries of medical knowledge hardwired into your brain without actually knowing how the hell anything worked. He'd excelled in his field med classes because he'd had the steadiest hands, but there was a difference between patching a comrade up versus literally cramming their blood and breath back into their bodies. The knowledge of _how_ to save them lived in the part of his brain where Alexander lived, but that wasn't something he could strictly access on his own. He had to ask.

No matter where Zell reached, he couldn't find the part of his brain that housed Eden. It was located off the periphery. If Alexander had given him discipline and Quetzacotl had given him joy, Eden had given him something so foreign it left him cold to touch it, so he didn't. Strapping up for a battle he wasn't entirely sure he was ready for, Zell found himself wondering what gifts Eden would give him if he asked nicely. He wondered if he dared to ask.

Squall was waiting for him in the entry hall of the training center, streamlined for battle, a small drawstring bag the only frivolous thing on him. Knowing what it held, Zell rolled his eyes but submitted, holding out his wrist when Squall shook out a Ribbon to tie around it. The rush of heady protective magic dispelled the last of his lethargy, leaving him jittery but focused. When it settled, he opened his eyes and gave Squall a thumbs-up, and the two of them got down to business without dialogue.

He allowed himself to hang back, letting Squall take the brunt of the first few battles, spending the time figuring out what was working in him and what wasn't. He knew better than to try to go against Kadowaki's orders, but he did fire off a few experimental Thundagas when the situation called for it, satisfied by the way they rattled around in his blood. It felt good. His speed was okay and his accuracy was passable, and if his stamina was lacking, he knew it'd come back with some rest and a few good meals.

When the first pissed-off roar broke through the general din of the Center, he caught Squall's eye and nodded. "I'll cover you," Squall said, giving his gunblade a shake to rid it of the blood from the last battle. "Let's see it."

Zell ran the sweat off his chin with his thumb. The T-Rexaur was already storming through the copse of trees like a thunderstorm on legs, and with a flash of steel Squall was surging forward to meet it.

Zell closed his eyes, rocked the back of his wrist into the opposite palm, and got to work. Past Quetzalcoatl's joy and past the resonance of Alexander's cathedral bells, into deadfall, past the soundless void in his head.

He found the echo of starlight within it, closed his mind around it, and said, _Eden._

He expected to hear at least a whisper in response, but nothing happened. The ground was shuddering underfoot. Zell planted his feet and dug in deeper, slowing his breath, softening his focus to take in more of the sky. There was a subtle shift inside it, the sensation of something moving in the dark, and silence again.

 _Okay,_ he thought, kind of extremely unimpressed with that. This time he let more slip into the background – the T-Rexaur's muddy bellows, the singing of steel on scale, the retorts as Squall's gunblade fired off its first rounds. There were soft points of light that disappeared whenever his gaze fell directly on them. He used the trick Ma had taught him when he was little, shifting his gaze to the side and only focusing on them with his peripheral vision. There was no response inside the lights. No move to answer his call.

He sank in the rest of the way, trying to close his fists around them, trying to draw out _something_ , and this time there was the sensation of something dropping out from beneath him, as sudden as a trapdoor opening center-stage.

He came to propped against a boulder, eyes full of grit. Squall was leaning against a nearby tree and examining a rent in one of his gloves. He looked up when Zell turned his head. "So," Zell said.

"Status," Squall said, as though it were an everyday event for his only teammate to zone out and leave him to deal with a ravenous T-Rexaur by himself.

Zell closed one eye and then the other. "Huh," he said finally.

"It reject you?"

"Naw man."

"Slow summon?"

"I don't know if she," Zell said, and closed one eye again, puzzled.

Squall pushed himself from the tree. Barring a tear here and there and a reddening mark on his face that looked like it might bruise, he looked mostly unscathed by the encounter. Zell wondered if anyone in Garden truly appreciated the fact that Squall Leonhart routinely tore through apocalypses mostly because he had nothing better to do. "Pick yourself up," Squall said. "Let's go again."

"Least lemme give you a boost," and Squall wasn't stupid either, because despite his pride he didn't try to pull away when Zell reached up and snagged his wrist, sending up two parts Curaga and one part Protect. "Kay, I'm good," Zell said, and bounced up off the rock.

This time they didn't wait for a T-Rexaur. Squall found the nearest Grat and kept it dancing while Zell sank into his summoning stance again. This time he arrived at the void quickly. He sought out the corners, pressured the link, tried to grip onto the underside of the space and yank it up, like pulling the covers off his bed.

Squall was rinsing Grat juice out of his hair in the artificial stream when Zell woke up. "We need a third person," Zell said, blinking between eyes to squeeze out the feeling of sand. "To cover you."

Squall made a non-specific noise in the back of his throat as he wrung the excess water from his hair. He swept his hair back over the top of his head, slicking it out of the way, and the unexpected resemblance to Seifer stole whatever words Zell had on deck. "Again," Squall said.

This time there was a shape in the void. When Zell reached out it felt oblong and metallic, seeming to hum with resonance under his hand.

Was it a ship? There were no curves to indicate it was anything other than a wall, but Zell got the same sensation he did when he was near the Ragnarok. When he tried to flex his brain around it, to see it all from a bird's eye view, a spark of blue went off in his head, lighting up the darkness for half a second.

 _It is a ship,_ he realized, growing cold, and then realized the reason he couldn't feel the contours was because it was so massive that it was actually blotting out the sky. He tried to push out from it, but the ferocious crescendo of static built up in his head, and once again there was the sensation of television monitors flickering on and off while the rest of—

Zell opened his eyes. "Again," he said, picking himself up off the ground.

"No." Squall flicked the Grat juice off his blade and sighted down it. The Grat lay in two Roughly Divided pieces, presenting a massive overkill that was probably an accurate indicator of his current mood.

"C'mon, I almost had it."

"You've passed out three times. We exceeded Kadowaki's restrictions long ago."

"Dude, nothing's touched me. One more time, let's go. I have this."

Squall shook off the last drop of moisture and slid the weapon between his belts. He turned and walked back to the entrance, and if there was one thing Squall Leonhart knew –even more than how to tear up ancient Weapons and lead entire military bases full of adolescent soldiers to victory – it was how to end a conversation.

With nothing better to do, Zell washed up and headed to the cafeteria to grab lunch. For once he skipped the hot dogs and grabbed a protein shake instead, which didn't end up mattering because everything he put into his mouth tasted like dragon.

* * *

.

They always spent some time in the beginning passing around a new GF, hooking it up here and there to see what kind of abilities worked best for whom, but for the most part a GF made its decision long before it was plugged into your head. If it liked what you were and who you were going to be, it came willingly. If it didn't, the results ranged from hilarious to painful before you figured out you needed to pass it on, like the time Cactuar missed the Grendel and shot Squall's ass full of holes instead, or the time Siren had coaxed Quistis out into the sea and nearly drowned her out of spite.

Irritable in general, not really all that used to being irritable in general, Zell held a quick war-council in his own head to figure out what to do with himself. He ended up rescuing his violin from its case under his bed and giving it a tune-up. He hadn't had time for it since the concert at Fisherman's Horizon, but this seemed as good a time as any to resume a hobby that didn't threaten to derail his general sense of time and space.

He'd gotten halfway through a bare-bones run of Dance With the Balamb Fish when the whisper started up in his head. "Yeah, too late,"he said. "But thanks for making me look like a dipshit in front of my commander again."

There was no trace of massive ship he'd seen back at the training center. She was back in his mind as a flickering nonsensical rotation of images; a basket of barley, a razor-sharp cut of limestone, the flash of blue sky between the branches of an elm. _You were not ready,_ Eden said.

"Yeah, okay, and tell me again what it is I'm supposed to be ready for?"

 _Time._

He wanted to be a dick about that too, but the fact was she was plugged into his head and he understood the nuance. He remembered the vastness of the ship, the terrifying depth of the dark beyond the stars, and wondered even now what he'd been looking at. It wasn't something his current vocabulary could sum up, even with the help of eternity in his head. "Next time, just tell me," he said instead. "Don't just let me zone out while Squall takes on the entire training center by himself."

 _We are not yet compatible._

"Yeah, I got that. But tell me beforehand. Don't let me fish around in the dark for ten years while I put people around me in danger. We talked about this."

The fields and trees in his mind disappeared. In their place came a large, flat screen full of static. The screen split into two, into four, sixteen, a hundred, and suddenly Zell was inundated with voices and white noise and images moving so quickly they hurt his eyes.

Realizing he was holding onto his violin with a death grip, Zell carefully set it down, propping the neck against the bed. _It is akin to filling a finite container with an infinite sea,_ Eden said.

"Yeah, 'finite container' was my nickname growing up," Zell said. He was a little out of breath. "Why choose anyone if they can't let you out? I mean, you're trapped in there, aren't you? Why not just stay in the Weapon for all the good it does you? At least there you didn't have to put up with such a small space."

Instead of answering him, she showed him another scene. This time the storm had put caps on the waves as white as the lightning. When the wings of the sky unfurled, letting in the sunlight, the rays reached clear to the bottom of the sea, revealing the serenity of the depths below the surface.

Irritation forgotten, Zell stared for a long time. _I've seen this before,_ he said, barely realizing he'd switched over to his old tongue. It didn't matter.

 _It is the inside of your mind._

His mouth filled with saltwater. He swallowed it and felt Quetzalcoatl stir in him, bringing with her the shiver of thunder, warming his back with her wings, and once again stolen memories were returned to him in a rush. A flurry of supplies were exchanged the day of the SeeD exam with people he barely knew and who barely knew him, people who were suddenly depending on him to keep them alive. Squall, practically a stranger and now a brother in arms, transferring Quetzalcoatl to him with a quick press of a thumb against his forehead: _it's already too crowded in here with Ifrit and Shiva._ The storm flooding him from the inside out, setting every cell ablaze, and Zell in that moment had come awake.A hundred battle-hardened insurgents waiting for them on the other shore hadn't mattered, because Zell had been waiting his entire life for her: the sum of all the storms he'd begged to return to him after they'd left him behind.

 _Your desire is to use me to defeat your enemies,_ Eden said. _But the power you seek has no beginning or end, no right nor wrong. Before you harness my power, you will need to know eternity, and all the beauty and cruelty that eternity entails._

 _And what if I don't want that?_ Zell asked.

Her laughter was as smooth as water over silt. _Then you should not have reached for me._

* * *

 _Thank you to my reviewers SilentStarlightSky, siobhane, Becalmed, Rasivel, and ignimortis. Your kind words and reviews are appreciated more than you know!_


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